“Tea industry depends only on cash. The labourers in the garden and warehouse need cash. Everyone does not have a bank account. We are facing a lot of problems," said a tea factory owner.

The tea industry as a whole is facing problems at every step, starting from plucking to selling post the demonetisation drive by the government. Satish Mittruka, a tea factory owner said, “Tea industry depends only on cash. The labourers in the garden and warehouse need cash. Everyone does not have a bank account. We are facing a lot of problems, because without cash, we can’t pay our labourers,”

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He further said that the customers have less small denominations of currency notes, leaving apart the bigger denominations.

“Our business won’t work with small currency notes as the payment takes place in lakhs and crores, and when the payments come in installments, then, it is creating problems. The circulation of notes is not in the market, when the currency will come in the market only then we will be able to do our work,” he added.

Kamal Tiwari, a trader said, that the main problem is that they can’t pay wages to the labourers because of which production is suffering and even the market is going down.

“It has already fallen by 10-15 percent because there are no buyers for tea. We are ready to sell 10-15 percent lower, still the market is not accepting. They are saying that market will fall more, so we are hampering,” he said.

He further said that the consumers are postponing items like tea and are buying necessary items like wheat and floor.

“Demonetisation is good but on the other side..at what cost? We are losing our business.” he added.

The tea traders are appealing to the government for some sort of redemption for the sake of the industry.